Seniors of Swat: Montco Senior Softball League hits 20 years on the diamond

Christian Menno @cmenno_intell

Wednesday

Jun 13, 2018 at 3:26 PMJun 13, 2018 at 6:24 PM

Members of the Montgomery County Senior Softball League will celebrate its 20th anniversary Saturday with a doubleheader against the Phillies Ballgirls in Hatfield Township.

Celebrating its 20th season, the Montgomery County Senior Softball League has endured by favoring its quirks and characters over standings and stats.

An idea hatched by former member Vic Zoldy, which led to about a dozen friends choosing up sides before each game, has swelled into a 16-team organization with more than 180 players.

And as members, all aged 60 or older, prepare to pen the next chapter in a storied rivalry with the Phillies Ballgirls at School Road Park in Hatfield Township on Saturday, some reflected on their improbable and unexpected journey around the bases.

“I never thought it would turn into this and I definitely never thought I’d still be playing at age 80,” said Ray Forlano, a retired real estate broker from Warwick and one of the two remaining active players (along with 90-year-old Angelo Malizia, of Harleysville) from the league’s inaugural season in 1999. “Back then, we just said gee, it would be nice to see if would could get enough players together to play a couple of games.”

Now there is a waiting list to join.

“Making a real good stop on a ball and throwing someone out at that crucial time or getting that hit that brings in the winning run is still a thrill even at 80,” said Forlano, who was chosen to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before Saturday’s doubleheader against the ballgirls. He’s played in the annual game before so he’s elected to give up his spot this year.

For those fortunate enough to be assigned to a team, it will most certainly begin with the letter M.

Monikers such as the Magics, Marauders, Mustangs and Marvels are found within the league’s three divisions.

“A lot of the fellas wonder about that,” Forlano chuckled.

When the league first started, he said, Zoldy got a good deal on some hats another customer had ordered but never picked up. Each was emblazoned with an M.

It became one of the league’s many amusing traditions and any new team that entered the league had to follow suit.

While Major League Baseball is a league beholden to numbers, its record books packed with a player’s accumulation of nearly every possible metric, the MCSSL’s historic accounting takes a different route.

“We do not keep statistics at all,” said George Schreader, a 69-year-old from Upper Gwynedd who serves as the league’s historian.

He laughs when asked how he landed the gig, adding that he’s not quite sure, but says he has come to truly enjoy documenting the exploits of his fellow “oldsters” since he joined the league seven years ago.

He continually adds to a collection of “Senior Softball Snippets” posted to the league’s website. The brief anecdotes or utterances overheard on the field over the years seem to capture the self-deprecating demeanor of the players.

In Snippet 186, one manager attempting to explain his team’s dismal record during a radio interview said simply: “The problem with this team is that everybody always shows up!”

“It just shows how much fun we have and how we laugh at and along with each other,” Schreader said. “We’re having a ball.”

MCSSL Commissioner John Frantz jokes that his wife was looking for ways to get him out of the house after he retired. She found a newspaper ad for the league.

He was having a blast playing each week but was hesitant when officials asked him to fill the commissioner’s role in 2008.

“I thought about it and felt that I really should give something back to this organization that I was having some much fun with,” he recalled. “But it’s not just me. A lot of people are doing a lot of things to make this thing run.”

Frantz still gets a kick out of seeing the camaraderie on the field and the playful ragging that follows an error.

“You can see it in their faces. When they make the big hit or the play in the field that they never thought they’d make, they just come to the dugout beaming,” he said.

While the league currently has no female members, Frantz said it has in the past and they are welcome to join up.

“Two times a week we get out there, put a shirt on, put our cleats on and just play ball,” he said.

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